Underground

pic from Graham's Travel Blog

AX rushed down the mechanical stairway that led to the Subway, by the corner of his eye he noticed big fat ZP, sitting in the station floor already two beers bottles by his side at 9 am, arghhh…
AX gingerly took a sit, it was the first station on that line, so the car was quite empty. AX looked around, he liked to check on people, being well on his thirties, he never kept a proper job on his life, gravitating around school all this time, always taking a Course on something. Ah, the social sciences, a never ending, all-encompassing field of study, human nature itself.
His parents were kind enough to support him, even got him a small apartment on the back of the family house, so he had his privacy.
On front of him, was a bald man with a moustache already gray, organizing his papers, further on the car, an attractive brunette took a sit, it was Summer and she was beautifully tanned, opened a gossip magazine, ignored AX after a quick glance. He was used to that, his attire revealed very much of his social inadequacy, so people usually chose to ignore him on the spot and he didn’t really mind, he had decided to keep the silent loser stance way back, in high school, when his skinny build and general ineptitude to sports, mixed with a congenial shyness enclosed him in books and the school library.
A young girl arrived and saluted the mustached man : “Good morning, Professor, you here ?”, the man mentioned some business he had to attend to that morning. The door alarm sounded and with it a big African woman, in a blue dress and a black veil rushed in, she looked around as if looking to something or somebody, she started to walk along the car and the train started to move too, she balanced a bit, but kept going, as the train made a steep curve, there’s was this hissing noise and some sparks flew from the wheels of the train, flashed on the tunnel walls.
AX decided to open is book, he was reading Harushi Murakami’s “Underground”, an account of the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway.